Thursday, December 15, 2011

All Your Rick Perry Gay Sex Rumors Collected in One Handy Book

By John Cook

Glen Maxey, the first openly gay member of the Texas State Legislature and longtime Democratic activist, spent most of last summer helping a reporter for a "national news outlet" nail down persistent rumors of Rick Perry's sexual relationships with men. The story got killed. So Maxey has published an e-book laying out the evidence. Among the charges: Rick Perry has a small dick.

In Head Figure Head: The Search for the Hidden Life of Rick Perry, which was published today, Maxey tells the story of a four-month investigation (conducted, oddly, mostly through Facebook messages and chats that he liberally reproduces) he collaborated on with an unnamed reporter. According to Maxey—who, while obviously a partisan, is as far as I can tell not a crank and served 12 years in the state legislature—he located two men who claimed to have had sex with Perry. One was a male prostitute who told associates that Perry had hired him three or four times a year for hotel parties with Perry and an aide. The other was a man who responded to a Craigslist ad allegedly posted by Perry. Along the way, there are dozens of other more tenuous second-hand reports, including one man linked to Perry who pointedly refused to deny the accusations.

It's all very anonymous and hazy and who knows if any of it is true. But the fact that this is coming from a fairly prominent Texas political figure brings it out of the realm of pure rumor and offers an engaging little glimpse into how your news sausage is made (or in this case, not made).

Here's a taste:

"James"

"James" is a real estate agent Maxey tracked down who says he had sex with Perry after responding to Craigslist ad.

The posting asked for someone willing to unlock the door, turn off the lights, and lie face-down on the bed, legs spread. James replied to the ad, and did as instructed. As he lay on his bed in the dark, James heard someone struggling to open the door. Shielding his eyes, he ran out and opened the door.... "He jerked down his shorts," [James said], "It lasted about a minute. He had a little dick. It was the worst fuck of my life. And on top of it all he stunk because he had been jogging. He then pulled up his shorts and put the used condom in his pocket."

As the mystery man tried to leave James' apartment, he struggled with the front door, which had a tendency to jam. The man started yelling for James to help him.... As James opened it...his face was illuminated, and seen by James for the first time.

"Oh my God," thought James. "I just got fucked by Rick Perry!"

According to Maxey, James said he saw a black SUV in the driveway outside his home and a man in jogging clothes with a gun drawn—allegedly a member of Perry's security team who became alarmed when he heard Perry yelling for help opening the door. He withdrew when he saw that Perry was OK.

Maxey writes that James had told the story to the reporter he was working with on the record—he agreed to be quoted using his last name and first initial of his first name—and that he had told numerous friends about the story contemporaneously.

Joey the Hustler

Maxey also says he found a male prostitute who told friends he worked for Perry. A "Gay Businessman" friend of Maxey's emailed him this:

The whole story is that i have a ex friend who hired this kid years ago fro sex and they became friends. I was out at Rain [a gay club in Austin] with my friend and we ran into this hustler kid. He very matter of factly stated that he had just been hired to spend the weekend at the Driskill with Perry and an assistant of Perrys. He was non chalant about it and said that it happened 3 or 4x a year and he gave some sexual details about Perry and the other guy. This was in the 2000s maybe 03.

Maxey and his reporter managed to find the hustler, "Joey," and engaged in a months-long dance to try to get him to go on the record with his story. Maxey arranged for lawyers to represent Joey, including a nameless female lawyer who sounds a lot like Gloria Allred—she "is always on TV with high profile clients"—so that he could negotiate a good price from the National Enquirer and other publications that were sniffing around (the "national news outlet" Maxey's reporter friend was working for refused to pay). In the end, Joey cut off communications.

"I suggest you ask Rick Perry."

The longest-standing rumor about Perry—and the one that has received the most public attention—is that his wife Anita caught him sleeping with his Secretary of State Geoff Connor and threatened a divorce. Maxey says that he and the reporter drove to Connor's house to confront him, and here's what Connor said: "I'm no longer a public official and I don't care to comment on that. I suggest you ask Rick Perry."

Among the other leads Maxey and the reporter pursued were reports that a gay mallrat who always wore fancy cloths and jewelry called Rick Perry his "sugar daddy" (he denied it when reached by Maxey), that Perry had an affair with a disgraced gay former legislator who had been convicted for misappropriation of funds (he denied it when reached by the reporter), that there exists a photo of Perry and the convicted legislator together, shirtless in a field of bluebonnets (he never found it), that Perry attended a gay party with a friend who "had his pinkie finger hooked into [Perry's] belt loop...all night long," and that Perry fired three gay staff members in a house-cleaning after the Connor rumors first emerged.

Maxey says the story was written, edited, and placed for publication last October—along with strenuous denials and legal threats from the Perry camp—when the corporate parent of the "national news outlet" killed it, partly due to squeamishness about the story and partly because Perry's campaign collapsed. He at one point promised all the details he had unearthed to a New York Times reporter, but that apparently never happened.